The Scottish Cannibal, Sawney Bean

Join Kelli as she goes over a tale of a Scottish incestuous cannibal family - the Beans.

As legend goes, they lived in a cave in southwest Scotland, only venturing out to kill passersby and loot them for good - and meat. Over 25 years, it's said they killed over 1,000 people.

But how much truth is there to this grisly tale? It sounds a little too gross to be real.

Let's dive into the history to find out where the Sawney Bean story comes from, how credible the sources are, and whether there's any truth we can corroborate from the story.

From James I and his bloodhounds to the Jacobite Rebellion and Battle of Culloden (I see you, Outlander fans), let's see how much history we can attribute to this gory story.

Support me on my Patreon - your support helps keep this podcast going!
http://www.patreon.com/APHOUT

Follow the APHOUT YouTube channel!

Intro and Outro music credit:  @nedricmusic
Find him on all streaming services and YouTube!
http://www.nedricmusic.com 

Transcript

The Scottish Cannibal, Sawney Bean
Intro
Welcome to A Popular History of Unpopular Things, a mostly scripted podcast that makes history more fun and accessible. My kind of history is the unpopular stuff - disease, death, and destruction. I like learning about all things bloody, gross, mysterious, and weird.

According to legend, there was a 15th-century Scotsman named Alexander Sawney Bean who lived in a cave in southwest Scotland - and it’s said that he, his wife, and his growing incestuous family killed and ate over 1,000 people.

In today’s episode, well, we’re gonna talk about that. First, we’ll go over the story of Sawney Bean and his incestuous, cannibal family - the inspiration for The Hills Have Eyes horror franchise, originally written and directed by Wes Craven in 1977, though the first version I saw was the 2006 remake with Buffalo Bill (Ted Levine) as the Dad. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was also inspired by Sawney Bean, along with other serial killers like Ed Gein. And there are tons of other Sawney Bean references in games, movies, songs, and TV shows.

Sorry, got a little off track there. As usual.

And since I’m off track, let me shout out my two newest Cannibal patrons, Zack O. and Linda W.! How fitting that you’re now both on team Cannibal, and today’s episode is alllll about Cannibalism! I love that you’ve joined, and thank you so much for your support. It means a lot! 

And if you want to be lovely like Linda or zesty like Zack, who by the way just gave me a brilliant idea for a podcast episode that’s coming up in the next few months, then come on over and join us at Patreon! You can join for free to show your support, or pledge $5 or $10 a month for extra perks, like bonus content.

But let’s get back to the show.

So first we’ll go over the story itself. It’s… pretty sensational in all meanings of the word. So, after that, we’ll do the history and dig into the source material to find out how credible this story really is. We’ll also take a look at the historical context - if this story is just fiction, then how and why was it created? What purpose did it serve? What was going on in history that explains why someone came up with a story about an incestuous cannibal Scottish family who lived in cave, terrorizing (...and eating) the locals?

We’ve done episodes like this before - reading a pretty gruesome story, then digging into the source material to determine its credibility; one of my favorites was the Werewolf of Bedburg, so go check that episode out when you’re done here!

This episode is dedicated to my Scottish fans and family - and let me know in the comments if you’ve ever heard of Sawney Bean, Scotland’s most famous cannibal!

So let’s get started!

The Legend of Sawney Bean
First, let’s go over the story of Sawney Bean. This version was the one published in 1826 in the Newgate Calendar, a London-based series of crime stories.

Our story takes place in the 17th century - that’s the 1600s. According to the legend, Alexander Bean was born in East Lothian [lowth - ee - en], about 8 miles or so outside Edinburgh. Though he was born Alexander, he went by his middle name - Sawney. And though his parents worked hard to provide for him, Sawney was idle and didn’t care much for working.

He met a woman named 'Black' Agnes Douglas, purportedly a witch, who was equally as idle and, quote, “viciously inclined,” and the two of them decided to leave the East, settling in the West - and I’m quoting from the original source here, 
...in a rock by the seaside, on the shore of the county of Galloway, where they lived upwards of twenty five years without going into any city, town, or village.

So you may wonder then - if they didn’t go into town at all, how could they survive living, err, in a rock on the seaside?

Cannibalism, my friends. Cannibalism.

Now Sawney Bean and his wife had a bunch of children, and their children engaged in incest and had Sawney’s grandchildren, and the whole brood lived in a cave. To survive they robbed and killed, taking whatever goods they needed off their victims and eating them for sustenance.

Here’s another direct quote from the source. Quote:
 By this bloody method, and their living so retiredly from the world, they continued such a long time undiscovered, there being nobody able to guess how the people were lost that went by the place where they lived. As soon as they had robbed and murdered any man, woman or child, they used to carry off the carcass to the den, where, cutting it into quarters, they would pickle the mangled limbs, and after- wards eat it; this being their only sustenance.

End quote.

Leftover bits, or food that they didn’t eat in time and rotted, were tossed into the ocean. And apparently, limbs would wash ashore in nearby towns, and the locals, who didn’t know about the Beans, were always perplexed as to why limbs kept coming in with the tide.

Searches turned up nothing. The cave where the Beans lived didn’t look like a habitable place from the shore - it was dark, it flooded a good bit with the tide, and there was no evidence of human settlement anywhere near its entrance. According to the story, the Beans lived way back in there.

Fear and chaos led to scapegoating - several local innkeepers were killed on suspicion of being the murderer. And the source tells us that this, of course, was very inconvenient for any travelers who couldn’t find lodging. On account of the innkeepers being killed and all.

The Beans were apparently super careful to not ambush more than six people if they were on foot, two if on horseback - first, they wanted the meat, and second, they didn’t want any survivors to run away and report what they had seen. And in this way, the killings continued for around 25 years. The story tells us that they butchered more than a thousand men, women, and children.

And then one night, the Bean family fell upon a husband and wife riding the same horse, coming home from a local fair. The husband fought back against the Beans, riding them down with his horse. But in the kerfuffle, the wife fell off the back of the horse, and the women in the attack part pounced. Here’s a quote from the source. Quote!

…the poor woman fell from behind him, and was instantly murdered before her husband's face; for the female cannibals cut her throat and fell to sucking her blood with as great a gust as if it had been wine.

Aw man, don’t ruin wine for me!

This done, they ripped up her belly and pulled out all her entrails. Such a dreadful spectacle made the man make the more obstinate resistance, as expecting the same fate if he fell into their hands… While he was engaged,... twenty or thirty from the same fair came together in a body; upon which Sawney Bean and his bloodthirsty clan withdrew, and made the best of their way through a thick wood to their den.

End quote.

And this guy was the first of Sawney Bean’s victims to make it out on an ambush alive… and undigested. His wife’s body, though partially pulled off into the woods, was abandoned by the Beans, so he paraded it around to show the locals what was done. And the news of this tragedy traveled alllll the way down to London.

King James I - the same one who was super anti-witchcraft, if you’ve listened to any of my English witch-hunting and witch trial episodes - came up to join the hunt for the Beans. Now normally, the cave where the Beans lived kept them safe - again, it didn’t look habitable or even accessible. But King James brought bloodhounds with him, and if you don’t already know, bloodhounds have an exceptional sense of smell and the ability to track down a scent over long distances - they’re not the only dogs good at hunting and tracking, but they’ve certainly got the reputation for being among the best.

And it’s a good thing James brought the dogs with him - when they came without smelling distance of the cave and went to go explore it a little, they sniffed out the Bean family. Here’s what they found. And I’m going to quote the source again, because I love a good original text. Quote!

[They] went in, and were all so shocked at what they beheld that they were almost ready to sink into the earth. Legs, arms, thighs, hands and feet of men, women and children were hung up in rows, like dried beef. A great many limbs lay in pickle, and a great mass of money, both gold and silver, with watches, rings, swords, pistols, and a large quantity of clothes, both linen and woollen, and an infinite number of other things, which they had taken from those whom they had murdered, were thrown together in heaps, or hung up against the sides of the den.

Sawney's family at this time, besides him, consisted of his wife, eight sons, six daughters, eighteen grandsons, and fourteen granddaughters, who were all begotten in incest. These were all seized and pinioned by his Majesty's order in the first place; then they took what human flesh they found and buried it in the sands

End quote.

The Beans were carted back off to Edinburgh and committed to the Tolbooth, a municipal building if you will and a jail, where prisoners were routinely tortured. But the Beans didn’t stay there long, as they were executed the next day without a trial.

The Men went first - our guy Sawney Bean, his sons, and grandsons. The source tells us that (sorry to the men out there listening to this) their genitals were cut off and thrown into the fire, and they all were made to watch. Then their hands and legs were cut off and thrown in too. They were then left to bleed out, which took some time.

Once the menfolk were dead, the women were next. The wife, daughters, and granddaughters, who had just watched what happened to the men of their family, were gathered together and tied around three poles, and then they were set on fire. And apparently, none of the lot were repentant, and died spitting curses and vitriol.

And that is the original story of Sawney Bean, the Scottish Cannibal.

I have… so many questions. But the first set of questions we need to explore are - when did this story first appear in print? Is there even shred of credibility to this story? Or is it just fiction? And if it is fiction… why are the English writing horror stories about the Scottish like this? 

It’s time for some historical context to figure out what’s going on here :)
Historical Context
Now according to Historian and Author Ronald Holmes, the earliest known publication of Sawney Bean’s story appeared in print in Carlisle around the year 1700.

Gory stories were in - I don’t think I need to explain why. It’s probably why you’re listening to my podcast. Or why I run a podcast and show based on gross stories. Or why true crime is so popular. And the Sawney Bean story was gory.

Side tangent, but it’s relevant. Though Sawney Bean’s story was first published in 1700, it would have been the perfect story for the penny dreadfuls, cheap serial books from the 1800s that covered stories like this. They were called penny dreadfuls because they cost a penny, and usually had, well, dreadful characters. For example the story of Sweeney Todd, the demon barber of Fleet Street, first appeared in a penny dreadful. And there were later penny dreadfuls of Sawney Bean, too. 

Anyways.

From Carlisle, the story traveled to Hull, then Birmingham, and then London, where it was told over and over again in various formats, including the most popular version that I used earlier for my retelling of the legend.

Carlisle, by the way, is in the north of England near the Scottish border.

So why on earth did a story about a Scottish cannibal pop up in northern England in 1700? Well in my head, the first place I go is anti-Scottish sentiment. Perhaps the English wanted to paint the Scottish in a bad light. Resident expert Ronald Holmes certainly thought so, arguing that, quote,
It is highly indicative that the legend of Sawney Bean was published only in England during the first hundred years of its existence in print. Since it combined a sense of wonder, degradation of a traditional enemy and so many well-known aspects of folk-tale and history it must have been something of a best seller.

Accusations of cannibalism as a weapon of propaganda is very old indeed and was used during this period. It was used during the Great Rebellion in England and was to be used again against the French during the Revolution. Against this background it may be believed that the legend of Sawney Bean was used as anti-Scottish propaganda. If so, it seemed to have some success, for the evidence shows that some people believed that the Scots ate children during the 1745 Rebellion.

End quote.

Interesting… well first, were there any events going on around this period of time that might support that theory? Maybe that 1745 Rebellion that Holmes referenced?

Well, I can think of two.

The 1745 Jacobite Rebellion, and the suppression of the Covenanters. Let’s do that latter one first.

In the wake of the Protestant Reformation, because of course we have to talk about the Protestant Reformation… again… England converted to Anglicanism under King Henry VIII in 1534, also called the Church of England. But in Scotland, the Church of Scotland adopted Presbyterianism under the teachings of John Knox. And the Covenanters were an active group of Presbyterians in Scotland. They were called covenanters because they signed the Scottish National Covenant in 1638, pledging to maintain their faith and form of worship. The English Kings, however, were not too keen about this, seeing it as a rebellion against the Crown. 

Long story short and simplified - it led to several conflicts between Scotland and England, and some covenanters even got involved in the English Civil Wars - at first against King Charles, but then later against Oliver Cromwell… it gets complicated and its not the point of today’s story.

But the argument is - did the English author a story painting the Scots as cannibals because of these tensions and conflicts?

The other thing I can think of, that Robert Holmes brought up as well, is the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745. Now I talked about this in more detail in my episode on the Order of the Pug, a secret society founded by Roman Catholics where its members… acted like pugs. It was weird. You should go listen.

But the short version of the story is that some Scots and disaffected Englishmen were unhappy with the King at the time, George II. Now back in 1688, the very Catholic King James II lost the throne in 1688 during the Glorious Revolution, where his daughter, Mary, along with her husband William, took power. After William and Mary we get Queen Anne, then King George I, and then King George II. But meanwhile, James II’s line was in exile, including his grandson, Prince Charles Edward Stuart. Better known to history as Bonnie Prince Charlie.

The Scots and disgruntled Englishmen helped support Bonnie Prince Charlie’s campaign to come back over the England and take the throne, which he considered rightfully his. And had he succeeded, he would have been crowned “James II.” So his supporters called themselves Jacobites, taken from the Latin for Kames, which is “Jacobus.” 

Over a series of uprisings and battles starting in the late 1600s and culminating at the Battle of Culloden in 1746, the Jacobites lost their bid to put Bonnie Prince Charlie on the throne. Bonnie Prince Charlie was deserted by many of his followers, his wife left him, and he died in Rome in 1788 as a broken man.

And if there are any Outlander fans out there, what I just described is the setting for the first two books. :)

So the theory about Sawney Bean, then, is that perhaps the English wanted to paint the Scots as man eaters, as horrible, violent, bloodthirsty cannibals. At least that one Scot, Sawney Bean.

But as novelist and journalist Sean Thomas notes in an article about Sawney Bean, quote,
But this idea, at least to my mind, is a bit feeble. For a start, the penny dreadfuls and broadsheets that tell of Sawney Bean are also full of hair-raising tales about highwaymen and pirates. Is the tale of… Dick Turpin an attack on Essex boys? Surely not. If the Sawney Bean story is to be read as deliberately anti-Scottish, how do we explain the equal emphasis on English criminals in the same publications? Wouldn't such an approach rather blunt the point?

End quote.

He’s got a point.

Maybe it is just a story - and a really successful one, considering the sheer number of pop culture references attached to it. But regardless of the oiginal intention behind the Sawney Bean story, it definitely had the effect of making the Scots seem violent and inhumane - evidenced in part by the widespread rumors that the Scots were cannibals circulating before the Jacobite Rebellion.

So what I want to know then, now that we know a bit more about the time period, is did Sawney Bean even exist?
Was Sawney Bean Even Real?
So what evidence can we look for to prove a person’s existence? Well, in this period of English and Scottish history, we would look to court records, jail records, execution records, even just local accounts and sources. I mean even King James I supposedly got involved in this story, so it should be referenced somewhere in Court documents, right? One would think?

Well, it’s nowhere. There is no mention of an Alexander Sawney Bean in any arrest of execution records, and we have records for people with much lesser crimes than the ones Sawney Bean and his incestuous cannibal family were accused of committing. But there’s nothing. We have no proof of his capture, arrest, or execution beyond what was printed in newspapers as fictional crime stories, or the penny dreadfuls.

And there are no royal records from James I’s time that corroborate the story of him traveling up to Scotland to hunt for the killer family.

And if they did kill and consume over 1,000 people from that relatively small little area around Galloway, woldn’t there be newspapers sources that talk about, I don’t know, all the missing people? There’s nothing there. Because it’s just a story. Which I think we all could have assumed anyway - it sounds a bit too over the top to be real. Which again reminds me of my episode on Peter Stumpp, the Werewolf of Bedburg. He faced similar accusations that just sounded too gory to be real.

So I feel pretty confident saying that Sawney Bean, at least the iteration we get, was not real. Maybe he was based on a real person and highly, grossly exaggerated over time. As Sean Thomas writes in his article, quote,
To add to the intrigue, we do know that cannibalism was not unknown in medieval Scotland, and that Galloway was in medieval times a very lawless place; perhaps nothing on the scale of the Bean legend took place, but every story grows and is embroidered over time.

End quote.

So what can we take away from this story? Well, I like the way Blaine Pardoe puts it. Quote:
…Why does this story have such long-lasting appeal? Is it morbid curiosity or something more? People have a need to experience fear and the survival of that terror. This is why horror novels and films have such a great following. We want to face evil, even if that evil is imaginary. Serial killers fascinate us, and are a booming business for true crime authors. There is something deeply sinister about someone who mass-murders. And there is the cannibalism aspect of the tale, too, which makes people squirm - toss in incest and a King involved in the manhunt, and you have the makings of a compelling story to read.

End quote.

And he’s not wrong. Again, you’re here listening to this story, and I’m here telling it.

But curiously, what began as an English story has morphed into a piece of Scottish folklore, accepted as truth despite its clearly fictional elements. And now, Sawney Bean has become part of the tourism industry; you can watch a Sawney Bean show at the Edinburg Dungeon, go visit his supposed cave dwelling at Ballantrae, eat at various Sawney Bean-named pubs, and more. There’s a Sawney Beans Pub and Grill in Dumfries, not too far away from where he supposedly lived and operated - I’m pretty sure it’s still in business, and if so, I’ll be visiting next time I visit Scotland. There’s even a Sawney Bean restaurant and pub outside Winnipeg in Canada? He’s everywhere nowadays.

So perhaps, sometimes, we don’t have to find the hidden history that explains a story. Sometimes, it really might just be a story, even if it is rooted in history and has definitely changed the course of it!
Outro
Thanks for joining me for this episode of A Popular History of Unpopular Things. My name is Kelli Beard, and I hope you’ve enjoyed the story of the Scottish Cannibal, Sawney Bean. Thank you for supporting my podcast, and if you haven’t already checked out my other episodes, go have a listen!

You can also support me and the show on Patreon - just look up a popular history of unpopular things. Subscribe to APHOUT on YouTube and check out the musician who created the song you’re hearing right now, Yello Kake! You can find him everywhere as Nedric and Nedric Music. Links for all that are in the description.

Be sure to follow my podcast, available wherever you listen, so you know when new episodes are dropped. And stay tuned to get a popular history of unpopular things.